Saturday, February 06, 2010

The Hamas government in Gaza on Saturday backtracked on its apology earlier this week in which it expressed regret for harming Israeli civilians in rocket attacks.

The apology had signaled a rare deviation from Hamas' violent ideology, and the subsequent zigzag reflects the Islamic militants' conflicting objectives.

Not so much, it got positive press for the apology and then retracted it because it didn't mean it and wanted to signal to its members and supporters that it was going to continue to attack civilians.

Hamas wrote to the U.N. that its primitive rockets were not intended to hit civilians, but often strayed from their course. It said the rockets were meant to defend Gazans against Israeli military strikes, but also maintained that the Palestinians have a right to resist Israeli occupation.

"We apologize for any harm that might have come to Israeli civilians," the Hamas government wrote.

On Saturday, the government claimed the response to the U.N. was misinterpreted.

"The report that was submitted regarding the Goldstone report does not include any apologies and what took place was an incorrect interpretation of some of its wording," the government said in a statement.

Quite a ham-fisted and unbelievable apology in the first place. The backtracking is similarly unbelievable.

Standard procedure of saying on thing for western ears to hear (or at least hear initially) and then another for themselves. Nice game if you can play it and never get called on it.